This TED Talk features author and professor of African American studies, David Ikerd, recorded live at TEDx Nashville 2018.

I am the proud father of two beautiful children, Elijah 15 and Octavia 12.

When Elijah was in the fourth grade,

he came to me, came home from school,

bubbling over with excitement about what he had learned that day

about African American history.

Now, I'm an African-American cultural studies professor,

and so as you can imagine, African-American culture is kind of serious around my home. So

I was very proud that my son was excited about what he had learned that day in school. So I said,

well, what did you learn? He said, I learned about Rosa Parks. I said, okay, what did you learn? He said, I learned about Rosa Parks.

It's okay, what did you learn about Rosa Parks?

He said, I learned that Rosa Parks was this frail old black woman in the 1950s in Montgomery,

Alabama, and she sat down on this bus, and she had tired feet. And when the bus driver

told her to give up her seat to a white patron, she refused because she had tired feet.

And it had been a long day, and she was tired of oppression. And she didn't give a per seat.

And she marched with Martin Luther King, and she believed in nonviolence.

And I guess he must have looked at my face and saw that I was a little less than impressed by his history lesson.

And so he stopped, and he's like, Dad, what's wrong? What did I get wrong? I said, son, you didn't get anything wrong,

but I think your teacher got a whole lot of things wrong. He said, well, what do you mean?

I said, Rosa Parks was not tired. She was not old,

and she certainly didn't have tired feet. He said, what? I said, yes.

Rosa Parks was only 42 years old. Yeah, you're shocked, right? Never heard that.

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